Hey thanks for asking! 

Magic rot is the natural result of a witch using magic in my nano project The Wyrdwitch, where magic itself leaves a sort of supernatural scar on the wielder. It starts at the extremities – fingers and toes, (as well as the mouth because #aeshtetics) and slowly works its way up the arms and legs and into the core of the witch until they’re consumed by the magic they produce.

There’s a subplot in the book about trying to find ways to either reverse or at least slow the effects of magic rot, but I haven’t put enough thought into it so far, or even decided if I want them to find a way or not.

It’s different for each type of magic, and even within magic schools it varies from witch to witch. For example, one character is a windwitch (Air elemental) who slowly turns to air herself, starting with her fingertips, and if she’s not careful, she will slowly fade into nothing.

Another character is a shiftwitch (Shape shifter) who’s not fully able to control his form, and is sprouting black feathers and an unnaturally beak-like nose because he shifts into a crow most often.

Firewitches are one of my favorites aesthetically – their arms can either show signs of normal burns, starting with first degree all the way up to third, or it can look sort of like magma under volcanic rock on their arms. 

Zorya herself is a sootwitch and a wyrdwitch – which means she has the power to summon and destroy monsters kown as wyrdbeasts, which are made up of this viscous cold oily substance that she absorbs through her skin when destroying them. It turns her fingers black and circulates through her bloodstream, slowly being filtered out. her fingers are permanently covered in a layer of soot after using her magic daily for a few years for work, and by the end of the story, she’s killed so many wyrdbeasts that some parts of her body been permanently turned into wyrdstuff, including one eye, her mouth, and I think some of her blood as well. 

Because aesthetic.

Tag List: @ambreeskyewriting@fearlings-lament@maitretmaitresse

In Wyrdwitch, I originally wanted to focus on the importance of a supportive, loving emotional environment and how it can help recovery from and/or coping with mental health issues, and it very quickly became evident that the MC’s feline/demon familiar is an allegory for staying in the familiar and validating headspace of “I’m depressed, and I don’t need to be fixed, I just need to stay who I am.” It’s not the best way of saying it, but anti-recovery is very easy, and recovery is hard and ultimately worth it, as well as finding friends and people who love you. Finding happiness is important.

Sooner or later I’m gonna write the scene where Zorya and the Grand Magician dance together and hate each other right before he discovers she’s a wyrdwitch, but the lead-up has thus far eluded me.

Thank you for sending this in!

📖 Tell us about your NaNo project(s)! (Title, log-line, WIP page, etc.)

This project is called Wyrdwitch, with the (two, rip) wip pages found here, and here (this one is the official one). It takes place in Europe in the mid 1920s, though I may make it a fantasy country just because I hate research, lol.

Anyway, Every couple years, the Grand Magician of Europe shows up and appoints a few people with magic powers to attend the magician’s university, but he ends up meeting the MC Zorya in Russia. She has the ability to destroy the Wyrdbeasts that have been plaguing Europe for centuries -- thus, Wyrdwitch. He takes her on as an apprentice, much to her great frustration, and she joins three other witches who are going to be working as his research attendants -- Ivan, Alexei, and Vittorina -- who is just the most obnoxious, terrible person in the world until she stops pretending to be. 

She and Zorya become close friends, and there’s a slow burn enemies to friends to lovers between Zorya and the Grand Magician because I’m a sucker for cliches, and it revolves around themes of recovery from trauma and mental health issues (though nothing truly goes away) and the importance of friendship because when do I not write about the importance of friendship?

📘 Have you participated in any NaNo events before this one?

Yeah, to varying amounts of success. Last year I tried to write more on Coriander and only got about 6k words in, but I’m feeling much better about it this time because I have a much easier goal.

📕 Tell us about the main character in your NaNo WIP. (What’s their age? Ethnicity? Sexuality? Affiliation? Occupation? Whatever you want!)

Zorya Kosheka is a twenty-something Russian woman who is still far from recovered from fighting in the Russian revolution about five or six years ago. At the start of the story, she’s acting essentially as a soot-centric janitor at the Leningradsky train station in Moskow, using her magic to get rid of the steam and smoke from the trains pulling in and out of the station, while she spends her spare time hunting mediumsized wyrd beasts in the city to dispel them before they cause trouble. Whatever she thinks of the current cultural climate doesn’t matter -- she has always excelled at keeping her head down

Her familiar, Noski-Nezhit (meaning zombie socks, essentially) is a black cat with white feet, that just so happens to actually be a wyrdbeast himself that only wears the shape of a cat. As it is, he’s her only friend, and he likes it that way. Zorya, too, at the start, because eldritch cats are much easier to deal with than people, with all their different opinions and thoughts and mannerisms. It’s far easier to spend her days sleeping and her nights hard at work and never speak to another human for more than five minutes at a time, because depression is real and get this girl some friends.

“Apology accepted.” It wasn’t. But she couldn’t shove her fear and vulnerability aside and ignore them when he was right in front of her.